The Bell
by Ulurunule
Summary: How Kaiba learned that 'mutt' and 'dog' were grave insults. Rated M for child abuse.


This got some good Tumblr feedback, so I figured I'd post it here.

Yu-Gi-Oh! is property of Kazuki Takahashi. Inspired by Fluffy-Pillow and Die Einzelganger.

* * *

Seto was given a study room somewhere above the kitchens. For the first few weeks his stepfather was oddly distant, lax even, and he could get away with trying to feel at home in the vastness of the Kaiba mansion. Even so, the size made everything seem unattainable: as if his wish for himself and his brother were nearby, just out of reach.

Once his training formally began, it was politics. And economics. And history and literature and art and chemistry and it was _so _much that he felt as if he worked from the crack of dawn until late in the evening just surrounded by textbooks, blocked off from everyone, blocked off from _Mokuba_, and he didn't want to think about what might happen once he left and work was left incomplete.

He somehow knew that it would not be a simple chewing out.

That's why, after a week of feeling accomplished – everything being done on time, despite the odds – he just couldn't.

When the workload _doubled_, he just _couldn't_.

The following day, there was no work _at all_. But he couldn't risk leaving that room. Something told him he couldn't. As if his stepfather was grinning, cigar in hand, just waiting for him to try to escape.

Around 3 o'clock, he was somewhat comforted by the smell of cookies being baked somewhere below. And to his surprise, a polite maid brought them up the stairs for him about a half-hour later. He took two.

They were _good _cookies, too.

For the next three weeks it happened in this way: working hard as soon as he was herded from his bedroom to gaze upon the stack of readings and essays and whatever else he was assigned to do that particular day in a windowless room, waiting until the scent wafting upwards from the ovens told him he would soon get a reprieve, however slight, however secret.

His first monthly progress mustn't have been too bad. After looking over a summary of Seto's work, one of Gozaburo's cronies in dark glasses bent over and whispered something into his ear, and he smiled.

Seto couldn't determine whether in pride, in satisfaction, or with an emotion much more sinister.

When the workweek started, Seto fidgeted. It was as if none of this work was important. He was doing well, right?

All he could think of were the cookies.

And when the smell entered his nostrils again, he stopped working entirely, pencil eraser rhythmically batting the desk. He soon realized it was tapping in time with the distant sound of bell, perhaps outside somewhere where he could not see it. The cookies tasted delicious.

For the rest of that week, and the week thereafter, whenever the smell of cookies began, the bell would follow it a few minutes later, as if it were a signal that he could slow down in intensity. That he could take a break and escape the horrific world he had flung himself and his little brother into, and just enjoy himself for an ever ephemeral period of time.

One day when the maid brought up the cookies for him, he asked her how Mokuba was doing. Her eyes flashed.

"Why, he's fine, Seto. Take your cookies, dear."

At the beginning of the third month, Kaiba worked. But he did not wait for the scent of his daily break. He waited for the sound.

Saved by the bell.

The bell told him when he was halfway through the day. It was the one marker that came to solidify time in the closed-off prison of a room where he was forced into schooling, more than simply being halfway done with the incredible amounts of textbooks and file folders and snapped pencil tips.

The bell then, one day, did not ring.

He had read that the human brain can sometimes know approximately what time it is due to the body's circadian rhythm – when to fall asleep, when to be awake. He suddenly became aware that he was _most _awake in that period of anxiousness as he first was swept with relief upon hearing the soft tolling, and without the sound of the bell at all, all he cold do was stare at his work, paralyzed, confused.

He grew hungrier.

Instead of being escorted to dinner, too, he was instead taken by the shady man in the glasses to his stepfather's office.

Should he be happy? He didn't normally see him beyond the last day of the month.

"Seto." He was in his armchair, facing away from him.

"…Yes? Father?"

"I want you to tell me what you learned in psychology today."

And the brain, working fast enough to burn rubber, suddenly went up in flames.

"I… I learned… that…"

"You learned about classical conditioning, didn't you, Seto?"

"..Yes, father."

"Tell me what you learned," he instructed, turning around to face his son, a silver bell in his hand.

"Classical conditioning's when… you associate one thing with something else…"

"Like in Pavlov's experiment."

"Yes. He made dogs salivate by ringing a bell."

The smile Gozaburo gave him was _not _one of pride. It was _not _one of satisfaction.

It was of an emotion much more sinister.

When Gozaburo gave the bell the tiniest of jolts, Seto was already staring at it wide-eyed, comprehension _just _beginning to dawn across his features.

Then Gozaburo rang it. Rang it loudly.

Seto practically collapsed, a hand clasped over his stomach, moaning with the pain of hunger.

"You stupid ungrateful child. I thought you were smart enough to _know _that I was testing you and your arrogant sense of so-called _intelligence_."

Gozaburo kicked him, and Seto was on the fetal position on the floor, tears in his eyes, wondering how, wondering why.

"Apparently you're too easily distracted from your work. You don't know what needs to be done. You need to _prioritize."_

Another kick, and Seto rolled over with a strangled shriek. He looked once at the mean guard with the glasses blocking the door. He couldn't see the eyes, but he somehow knew he couldn't stand this, either.

"You're not smart. You're not worthy, you pathetic _runt _and _excuse _of a boy. You're nothing more than a toy."

Seto flinched again as he saw Gozaburo move again, but instead heard the bell ring, very loudly, very close, and another attack of hunger washed over his entire body, and he felt himself drool on the hardwood floor.

He would never forget the insult of his next words.

"You're just a moldable little toy. You're acting just like the dog you are."

With that, Gozaburo told Isono to take the _mutt_ outside as he lit up a cigar, exhaling with satisfaction as he immersed himself in the view out his office window.


End file.
